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“Christmas is when you have to go to the bank and get crisp money to put in envelopes from the stationery store for tips. After you tip the doorman, he goes on sick leave or quits …” – Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol and Truman Capote were featured on the December 1978 Christmas issue of High Times, Warhol dressed as Santa Claus and Truman as.. (according to Warhol) “a little girl.”

Warhol wrote about the day of the photoshoot (September 26, 1978):

“[Toni, from High Times] had a Santa costume for me and a little girl outfit for Truman. But Truman wasn’t in the mood to go into drag, he said that he was already dressed like a little boy. Truman was really drunk, hugging around.” (from The Andy Warhol Diaries)

When Warhol first arrived to New York City, he had an unusual obsession for writer, Truman Capote. The obsession was so extreme that at one point, Warhol had called him so frequently that Capote’s mother had to intervene and tell Warhol to stop calling.

Capote’s first impressions of the artist: “When he was a child, Andy Warhol had this obsession about me and used to write me from Pittsburgh… When he came to New York, he used to stand outside my house, just stand out there all day waiting for me to come out. He wanted to become a friend of mine, wanted to speak to me, to talk to me. He nearly drove me crazy.”

Ultimately, as Warhol rose to superstardom, Capote no longer looked at Warhol as an unfortunate young man who had become a borderline stalker, but as an artist whose talent and unique perspective on life made the obsession more flattering than anything. The 1978 cover of the two fondly embracing each other is both heartwarming and telling of how much fame and accolades can transform the opinion of almost anyone… a concept of which Warhol was well aware.